Editorial: Failed bounty plan brings attention to rat problem

A $5 bounty for every dead rat brought to St. Clair Shores’ Public Works Department must have seemed like a good idea at the time.

The outcome wasn’t all bad. Direct population control wasn’t the goal; education about eliminating habitat was.

The plan was that residents age 18 and older would bring carcasses to the city DPW in a clear plastic bag to collect the bounty. Residents were required to use bait traps. They obviously weren’t allowed to shoot the varmints.

Residents who carried in the dead rodents would be required to authorize an inspection of their property to determine if it provided places for rats to live and multiply.

It would give the city a handle on where rats were concentrating and where to direct city resources to combat them.

The response to the proposal was mostly negative.

Placing the program on the city’s website wouldn’t help with the city’s marketing efforts, one councilman said.

Reactions on the city’s Facebook page were also negative, and few appreciated new reports that spread word of the bounty program far beyond the city’s boundaries.

But reaction to the proposal, as negative as it was, appears to have had a positive impact. Residents are more receptive to the rest of the program.

All of us need to know what kinds of property maintenance encourage infestation of rats and how to eliminate them. If we think we know, it doesn’t hurt to be reminded.

We discourage rats by eliminating piles of wood or debris, eliminating dog waste and bait-trapping the animals when we see rats, rat holes or other signs of infestations. Discussing what we see with our neighbors helps, and so does contacting city officials when the problems resist solutions and become widespread.

Cities and residents can work together to deal with rat infestations.

St. Clair Shores officials plan to meet on the matter with the state Department of Agricultural and Rural Development. Officials from Eastpointe and Roseville also want to attend the meeting.

Rats are a nuisance and an occasional health hazard, and many communities have had to deal with them in the past few decades.

But they don’t present an impossible problem as long as residents care about their property and their neighborhood.